The Life Beyond the Veil Volume I: The Lowlands of Heaven - George Owen, Kenroy Hunter, Geoff Cutler (best novels for beginners .TXT) 📗

is our journey set, and ours is to do the thing we find to hand, to do it thoroughly and well, and finish it quite, and then to reach out for the task set next in order. When that is finished well, then another will be awaiting us. We shall never find that we have reached the end, I think. For as me progresses one comes to feel the possibility more and more of a truth beneath those words “for evermore,” “world without end.” But we doubt if you do yet, friend, and we say this with courtesy.

And now we bless you, and leave you in the hope we may come again, for it is well, and there is sweetness in it, to bend to whisper into willing ears of some of the minor glories of our Heavenly Realms. Be sure, friend—and tell others who will hear it—that this life which awaits you is not a mere bodiless dream in a twilight region somewhere beyond the boundary of the real and actual. No; it is strenuous and intense, this life of ours. It is filled with service and endeavours crowned, one after another, with success; of patient pressing onward, and of indomitable wills attuned each to others in comrade service for the Lord of Love, Whose Life we sense and inspire, but Whom we do not see, and Whose Home is too sublime for us to know.

Onward we press, and often take the hand of one a little behind us, and with the other seize the skirt of one a little on before. And so we go, my brother; yes, and so do you,

and others working with you. And if we are a little way on before, well, there are many who lag behind. Take their hand in your own, and gently, remembering your own comparative frailty, and if the task be too heavy for you, do not loose that hand you hold, but reach the other out— and here is mine and that of many another with us. You shall not fail, so you keep your own vision and your life both bright and pure. Nay, rather shall that Vision grow more glorious, for is it not written, friend, that such as are pure in heart shall SEE GOD?†

Friday, October, 31, 1913.

They who say that we come to Earth in order to help are correct. But they who hope that we shall help to such a degree that their own endeavours will be unnecessary are in error. It is not permitted to US so to enable you as to lessen the value of Earth’s schooling. And although this seems so reasonable as to be almost of the nature of a truism, yet many there are who look to us to do what only they themselves can do; and that in no ordinary measure, but almost, as it were, miraculously.

Who is writing, please!

We are with your mother—Astriel and friends.

Thank you. I thought the wording was not quite like that of my mother and her companions.

No, I suppose it is not. Partly, of course, because we are of different character, different sphere, and also different sex, which is not without its peculiar characteristics here as with you. And partly, also, because we are of a different Earth period from your mother and her friends.

Do you mean you lived on Earth some considerable time ago?

Yes, friend, in England, when George the First was king, (1660 – 1727) and some of us earlier still.

About yourself, Astriel—who, I suppose, are the leader of your band—can you kindly tell me anything?

Certainly. But you do not realize that it is more confusing to give these Earth details than it might seem to you. I will say what I can, however. I lived in Warwick, and was a teacher in a school there—head master. I cannot give the exact year when I passed over here with any certainty unless I look it up, and it does not really signify.

Now shall we say what was in our minds? We are permitted to help, but with discretion. When people

suppose that we ought to help them in scientific investigation, for instance, they surely forget that God has given them minds of their own to use in His service. And to that end they are left to tread their own natural way, and when they have done what they are able, we, now and again, point the way onward and help them to further knowledge.

Can you give me an instance in point?

I remember that once I was impressing a man who was investigating the laws of psychology in the matter of visions and dreams. He wanted to find out what was the cause of certain dreams being prophetic—the connection between the dream itself and the incident which it foreshadowed. He applied to me, and I told him that he must continue his investigations and use his own mind, and, if it were well, he would be given to understand.

That night I met him when he fell asleep and conducted him to one of our observatories where we experiment with the object of portraying, in visible form, the events hovering about the present moment; that is, events which have happened shortly before, and those which will happen shortly in the future. We were not able to go far back or far ahead at that particular establishment. That is done by those in the higher spheres.

We set the instruments in order and cast upon a screen a picture of the neighbourhood in which he lived, and told him to watch intently. One particular item was the entry into the town of some great personage with a large retinue. When the display was over he thanked us and we conducted him back to his Earth body again.

He awoke in the morning with a feeling that he had been in the company of certain men who had been experimenting in some branch of science, but could not recall what it had been about. But as he was going about his work that morning the face of the man he had seen in the procession came to his mind vividly, and he then remembered several scraps of his dream experience.

On opening a newspaper a few days afterwards he saw an intimation that a visit was projected to the town and district of this same personage. Then he began to reason things out for himself.

He did not remember the observatory, nor the screen pictures we had shown him, as such. But he did remember the face and the retinue. So he reasoned in this way: when our bodies sleep we ourselves, at least sometimes, go into the sphere of four dimensions. That fourth dimension is such as enables those who dwell there to see into the future. But coming back to this realm of three dimensions, we are not able to carry over with us all we have

experienced when we ourselves have been in the realm of four. Yet we do manage to hold such items as are natural to this lower realm, such as the face of an Earth dweller and a retinue in procession.

The connection, then, between such a dream as foreseen and the events themselves is the relation of a state of four dimensions to a state of three. And the former, being of greater capacity than the latter, covers at any moment a wider range of view, as to time and sequence of events, than the latter can do.

Now, by such use of his own mental faculties he had arrived at as great an advance in knowledge as I could have given him direct; and by so doing he had also advanced in mental training and power. For although his conclusion was not such as would pass muster here without rectification in several points, yet it was roundly and broadly correct, and serviceable for a practical purpose intellectually. I could not have infused into him more than he had found out for himself.

This, then, is the method of our work, and, when people find fault with us and impatiently demand that this method should be altered to suit their ideas of what is the proper way, well, we have to leave them to themselves, and, when their minds are more humble and receptive, we return and continue.

And now, friend, let us tell you the immediate bearing of this on your own case. You sometimes wonder why we do not make these messages more vivid, as you put it, so that you may have no doubt or difficulty in believing that they come from us to you. Well now, think of it all in the light of the above, and you will see that, from time to time, you are given just so much as will help you to help yourself. Your training, remember, is still proceeding; you have not yet arrived, nor will you while you are in the Earth life. But if you go on trustfully and faithfully you will find that things will grow more plain. Accept what is not self-contradictory. Do not look out too much for proof or disproof; but rather for consistency in these messages. We do not give you too much, but we give you all that will help you. Be critical, certainly, but not unbalanced. There is much more truth than falsehood round about you and your life. Look out more for the truth and you will find it. Beware of the false, but not superstitiously afraid. When you take your way along a mountain-path your mind is alert in two directions—for the right and safe foothold, and against the unsafe places. Yet you give more attention to the positive than the negative; and rightly so, or you would go slow on your journey. So tread that you do not slip; but, go forward also fearlessly, for it is those who fear who lose their balance, and come most often to disaster.

God be with you, friend. His Presence is glorious here,

and shines through the mists which envelop the Earth, and that radiance may be seen by all—except the blind, and these cannot see.†

Note. —The reader will probably feel that the ending of this present series is somewhat abrupt. I felt so, too, and when at the next sitting Zabdiel8 took up the tale I stated as much. On which the following conversation ensued:

What of the messages I have received from my mother and her friends? Are they, to cease? They are incomplete —there is no proper conclusion to them.

Yes; they will stand very well as they have been given to you. Remember, they were not meant to be in the form of a complete history, or novel. Scrappy they are, but not unhelpful to those who read with a right mind.

I confess I am rather disappointed at the ending. It is so abrupt, Lately something was said about publication. Is it your wish that they should go forth as they are?

That we leave to your own discretion. Personally I do not see why they should not. I may tell you, however, that this writing you have been doing lately, as all former writing you have received from us, is preparatory to a further advance—which I now propose to you.

That was all the satisfaction I obtained. So there seemed to be no alternative but to regard this instalment as a preliminary to further messages.

G.V.O.

1 See chapter 2.

2 Depending on which books in the reading list the reader chooses, this will be found to be true, or apparently false. In the Anthony Borgia books, as an example, the spirit (Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson) has not yet, in my opinion, learned the true nature of many of the Bible's passages. If one reads the Robert James Lees trilogy, a great many Bible passages are shown to have Truth, albeit other than what is typically believed by orthodox Christians. In the Padgett Messages the same applies, although other passages are deemed to be